Quotes By Steve Lacy

When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.

If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that.

I've been working on the soprano saxophone for 40 years, and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you, the only limit is the imagination.

Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant.

If you're trying to invent something new, you're going to reach a lot of discouraging points, and most people give up.

The more original something is, the more of a threat it seems until the people catch up with it. That happened with Thelonious Monk. It happened with anybody who is really original.

I was spoiled by Monk's music because it was so good, so complete.

Saxophone is one thing, and music is another.

I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio.

I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.

It's very important to go through periods where you sound just rotten and you know it, and you have to persevere or give up.

I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.

When I first started playing music in 1955, there was just a small body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing.

Circumstances can be very important. Find the right people to work with.

If you have music you want to play that no one asks you to play, you have to go out and find where you can play it. It's called do or die.

I think it is in collaboration that the nature of art is revealed.

Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo.

You must have the music to justify an instrument's extensive use.

There is an awful lot of what I call recreational jazz going on, where people go out and learn a particular language or style and become real sharks on somebody else's language.

When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all.

I've always been extremely lucky in playing with great people who knew much more than I did. That's how I got from there to here.

Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work.

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.

Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways.

Play difficult and interesting things. If you play boring things, you risk losing your appetite. Saxophone can be tedious with too much of the same.

You have to sound sad first of all, then maybe later you can sound good.

You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.

Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk.

Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.

The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity.